In this essay, told from my perspective as a white woman, I spend time critically analyzing the caricatures of racist white women as I hold them up against stories of actual white women. My goal is illuminate how stereotypes of white racist women serve as a normative yardstick for the construction of another kind of white woman: the antiracist…

Adolescence is known as a sensitive and vulnerable period of human development. Given the sensitivity of this period for girls as future mothers and the importance of mental health in fulfilling the femininity and motherhood roles, it is required to attend to the psychological status of adolescent girls. Therefore, a thematic analysis-based study…

Free, online games tailored specifically for girls have carved out a burgeoning niche in a marketplace that has traditionally catered to the interests of boys. However, girls' games may have a negative impact not only on girls' perceptions of their gendered roles in society, but also on their attitudes towards their future career choices. Using…

Research has suggested that the disproportionate number of Black girls subject to school discipline is not due entirely to their higher levels of misbehavior, but racial and gendered stereotypes surrounding Black girls' femininity. This study uses student-level data from two national longitudinal multi-site program evaluations, Teens, Crime and…

Hélène Cixous is perhaps best known for her paper, 'The Laugh of the Medusa' (1976) and her literary contributions outside academia. In this paper, we pick up a lesser known Cixous text, 'Le Sexe ou la tête?' that offers an interesting and provocative perspective on the traps associated with being feminine in a masculine environment. As we…

The present study addresses the gender gap in leadership roles in Mexico through the lens of three leadership constructs. The objective was to compare female and male individual cultural values to explain differences in leadership style and agentic behavior. The sample consisted of 185 graduate students in Baja California, Mexico. Participants…

This study explored the notion of feminine leadership among women in middle leadership positions in Kuwait's private universities. Using semi-structured interviews as the main source of data, 12 female leaders who currently occupy middle leadership positions and those who have held similar positions in the past were interviewed. The findings…

Although political relations between Russia and Norway have softened over the years, the symbolic boundaries persist. In this article, we illustrate how Russian female migrants in Northern Norway relate to these symbolic boundaries. Thus, perspectives from the phenomenology of the body and critical phenomenology are used to analyze qualitative…

This article explores the potential for martial arts to support transformation and community building for women. Findings indicate women can derive many individual benefits from learning martial arts. Yet, the benefits must extend beyond the individual level to create social change. Based on an evaluation of literature on women's experiences…

This article reads contemporary Chinese children's author Yin Jianling's novels "The Paper Puppy" ("Zhiren") and "Orange Fish" ("Juzi Yu") alongside her letter collection "Fifteen Letters to Girls" ("Zhi Weilai de Ni") to explore the overarching themes of femininity, difference and female…

How Latinas experience their racial identity is unique when viewed through the Black and white racial dichotomy that exists in the United States. In Latin America, race is understood to be phenotypical and determined based off the color of your skin, whereas in the United States, race is often understood to be genotypical (Darity et. al, 2005),…

Culturally based sororities emerged on college campuses in order to combat the race-based discrimination faced in historically white sororities. Despite their historic mission to attend to racial issues, questions remain of how culturally based sororities attend to other identities and forms of oppression in these spaces. Centering the stories of…

This sequential explanatory study focuses on two forms of sight: Sankofa (hindsight) and surveillance (close observation or monitoring (Foucault, 1995, 2000; Temple, 2010; Quarcoo, 1972). These two ways of seeing can provide a unique perspective on Black women's career experiences in historically white institutions. I focus on how European…

Traditional views of leadership often associate strong leadership with directness, decisiveness, and dominance, which are stereotypically coded as masculine while perceiving empathy and collaborative orientation-- qualities commonly associated with femininity--as less compatible with effective leadership. However, contemporary research…

The purpose of this dissertation study was to investigate how female first-year, first-generation college students' values, attitudes, and beliefs were influenced by their interactions with their peers, family, and institutions during the first-year transition period. The goal of the research was to provide insight on what their feminine…